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From a tiny flash in the sky, you can see the light of a million worlds.

It was autumn in the land of Hilaboreas. The air had a thick, cool feeling to it, and the sun danced in orange and purple robes as it set into the dusk. Shards of jade and gold flickered across the clouds.

When a storm would approach in this season, the crows and sparrows from the forests sought refuge in the shadow of the castle where the Tyrant Rayos ruled. At least in his domain, there was safety from the twisted, black hearts of the Morlogians. Those orcs, trolls, goblins, and other fiends.

The name of this kingdom dated back to the Fifth Aeon, when it was first called hila, "northern", boreas, "forests", because of how this patch of fertile land hugged the border of the elven forests at the top of Lokar, the known world. Its more ancient name was Lengshu, the land of cold trees, in the language of the Third Aeon. It had several other forgotten names before that, lost to the lips of humans.

Hilaboreas was a petty kingdom, ruled with an iron fist by the Tyrant Rayos, who ascended by slaying a dragon in the nameless wastelands to the northwest. When a human slayed a dragon, it was natural in this Seventh Aeon for him to become a Tyrant, or one who ruled by force. He was getting old now, however, and every human knew their destiny was to return to the ground as dust. This did not stop him from scheming for more power, an insatiable urge. Along with the banquets and music from his court came hushed whispers of a deep dungeon for anybody who crossed him.

There weren't more than a couple thousand humans who lived in this small kingdom. It was a dangerous and precarious place to be, after all. It was a land situated in a buffer zone between the elven forests and their emerald kingdom Ilfaros, which stretched as far north as any human could fathom, and the ancient human stronghold Paigang to the southeast.

It was an independent kingdom, free from any orc or elf or goblin, free because the Tyrant Rayos ruled with a strong fist, but not just by that alone. When he slayed that dragon he stole its heart to put in a cauldron. That was his hidden power, to have a steady flow of the dragon's sticky purple blood, straight from its eternal beating heart. What human could ask for anything more?

The humans who tilled this land, who had been here for Aeons, rallied around this strong hero, this dragon slayer. Some for a taste of that purple, what they called the porfuro, which gave humans magic, a sixth sense, but at a massive cost. Too much and it wasted you away, broke your connection to the sacred law of humans, the Bionomnos. Too much and it cursed your bloodlines forever.

Others only wanted protection from the other species that surrounded the kingdom, and others still were there to serve, regardless of the benefits they would receive. These peasants built the Tyrant's castle with their own hands, busting stone, digging canals, sowing seeds to feed the gentry elite who were chosen among their lot. If they were lucky, they got a seat in the Tyrant's court, protected by the granite walls. If not, they remained on the outside, left to toil on their ancestral plots, shielded only by the shadow of that castle.

And it was under this long shadow where Jason lived in a small cobblestone cottage with his mother Clio. His father, a mercenary named Hector, was murdered in an orc raid when he was seven years old.

Those nasty, black-hearted orcs fell upon the human camp deep in the southern wastelands, a place called the Treacher, while Hector and seventy-eight other mercenaries were on an expedition in service of the kingdom.

Tyrant Rayos paid out a small sum of silver to the widows of his mercenaries. Fifteen silver rubla, enough to buy the humble cottage where Clio raised her son Jason, who would grow up without his father. It was just enough for the apple orchard and a garden, too. The harvest paid their daily expenses, but they scraped by, with debts at the end of the year.

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Jason was picking a basket of pink apples with his mother when he saw the fiery purple flash in the sky.

"What was that?" Jason asked. "On the horizon there, to the west where the sun sets. That flash, did you see it?"

Clio shook her head. She was knelt tending to the rosemary bush when her son jumped with excitement. "Tell me it's not this game again," she said. "A sign of the sky people, was it? If only it were true, lad. Your head is in the clouds even when you're in the garden."

"It was a purple flash," Jason said. "I swear on it. I have to go after it, whatever it is, I have to find it."

"A young man of two minds you are," Clio said. "Your head's either up there dreaming about the sky people, or down in the ground, digging in dirt to find some secret past, and for what? What about the now, son? What about what we have to do today? Our taxes are due in a month, and we haven't a silver rubla to spare. The garden will get us through the winter, I hope, but there's still canning to do."

The sky people were part of a mythical story, passed down through the Aeons, of a small group of humans with "fire orange eyes and hair" who broke away from Lokar on steel ships that could ascend to the heavens. It was the sort of myth that became legend, that became stories, that became rumors and children's tales.

Jason believed in the sky people. Only because he trusted and loved his father. The last memory he had of his father Hector, before he left on that deadly expedition, was the story he told him at his bedside. He was seven years old when he heard it. "A wandering merchant said they'd come back to Lokar again," Hector told the young Jason by candlelight. "Their eyes are bright like fire. They live up there, by the stars. At night, you can see their cities move. And their ships burn bright when they return."

Jason kept this story close to his heart. Every night he watched the dark sky and saw the moving lights. Most people said that was nature, part of the heavens, impossible for them to be some lost humans up there.

But that didn't matter to Jason. He believed his father. Now he was nineteen and he wanted to know the truth. He watched the skies closely, and any time he saw something strange light up the sky, he had to go check it out.

"I'll clean up the weeds and pick the apples when I get back," Jason said. "I promise, mum. Trust that I'll have the silver when taxes come due, too. You have my word. I'll be back soon enough."

"Don't go too far," Clio said, with a loving smile. She knew that she couldn't stop her boy. There would be a day when she had to let him go, to fly on his own. It's just that she didn't want that day to be today. "Take an apple before you go."

Clio stood up and brushed the garden's soil from her linen. She reached up and picked a low-hanging apple. It glistened with a pink shine. She handed it to her son, crossed her arms, and smiled.

"I won't be long," Jason said. "Just to the edge of the wood."

With that, Jason hurried out the side gate of the orchard, to the dusty path that curled into the untamed forest. He took a bite of the pink apple and he felt a tickle on his lips. He looked down and the apple was rotted with a hole on its side. A big worm poked its head out of the pink fruit. It didn't look like a normal worm, though. It was big as a baby snake. Its tongue flickered like a serpent, too.

Jason paused in front of the cottage and looked closer at the apple and this strange worm. The more he looked at it, the more it did look like a baby snake. He remembered a folk tale about biting into the apple and seeing a serpent. It was an omen, a portent they called satanous, which brought forbidden knowledge of the past, present, and future.

The elders said that this knowledge was steeped in misery, death, and despair. For once you unlock a long-held secret, there's no putting it back.

"That was just a folk tale," Jason mused. But he was nevertheless encouraged. He felt deep down that this flash in the sky would lead to something big. He closed his eyes and vision swelled up in his mind's eye. Terrible images of goblins, direwolves, orcs, giant bear, and vampires. Green and black dragons. Deserts and swamps that cascaded to the horizon without any end. And a beautiful girl with fiery eyes, who held a dagger pointed up to the stars.

Jason took one more bite of the fresh side of the pink apple, tossed it to the dirt, and set foot into the forest. His adventure was about to begin.